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Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

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Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#31

Post by akanet »

AquinasCoder wrote: post #28
akanet wrote: post #6

Hi, I'm the author of the piece, perhaps better known here as founder of CoderPad. Feel free to ask me anything but things are a bit crazy right now!

You mention that there's value in Lambda's mission, but I'm curious as to whether you believe that Lambda's business model is redeemable. It's hard to argue that there's clearly a major risk involved in attending a program like this, but at the same time it seems to be working for some individuals. Would these high-achieving individuals be able to teach themselves? Possibly. But I'm not sure that going back to the tr…

Bootcamps probably need a longer and more rigorous trial period - one thing that students were really pissed about was that they didn't find out that Lambda was bad until after the month-long forgiveness period ended.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#32

Post by caust1c »

codegeek wrote: post #30

I could be wrong but isn't Lamdba School a perfect example of destroying a noble idea due to the venture capitalish returns expected from the company ? If there wasn't so much pressure to grow that fast, perhaps they would have done a better job focussing on the quality and outcomes instead of growth at any cost ?

Reading history about the founder, I think he had his eyes set on massive growth from the outset over the actual experience.

He got starry-eyed working in growth at LendUp and wanted to build his own rocket ship. I don't think he ever put the students above running a trendy fast-growing startup.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#33

Post by kick »

akanet wrote: post #6

Hi, I'm the author of the piece, perhaps better known here as founder of CoderPad. Feel free to ask me anything but things are a bit crazy right now!

These documents show that, as recently as August 2018, a hedge fund paid $10K to purchase half of Lambda School’s ISAs.

Was this at $10k/ISA? And was it half of all ISAs or all of half of the ISAs?

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#34

Post by cheshireoctopus »

songzme wrote: post #17

I'm not a fan of bootcamps because I think a lot of them are more focused on making money than actually helping people who need help. Last year I decided to take action and started a free coding group at our local library: https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3 I show up before work every day (M-F at 8am) to help students who are learning how to code. So far no students have gotten a job yet, but our group consistently…

This is really inspiring. Thank you for sharing.

Few questions if you do not mind:

1. How did you broadcast your Meetup to your students?

2. It looks like you have students pull lessons from a repo. Do you find it challenging to manage a handful of students who are all at different places in your lessons?

3. How do you avoid burnout?

4. Do you plan on open sourcing your lessons?

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#35

Post by akanet »

kick wrote: post #33
akanet wrote: post #6

Hi, I'm the author of the piece, perhaps better known here as founder of CoderPad. Feel free to ask me anything but things are a bit crazy right now!

These documents show that, as recently as August 2018, a hedge fund paid $10K to purchase half of Lambda School’s ISAs. Was this at $10k/ISA? And was it half of all ISAs or all of half of the ISAs?

i see now that i could have worded that better - but 10k per entire ISA, and half of ISAs minted

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#36

Post by hundt »

nkrisc wrote: post #29

About these ISAs: do they require any kind of good faith effort to find a tech job after completing the boot camp? If someone was just interested in tech, but worked in an unrelated field with no intention to switch, how would Lambda protect themselves? Obviously they could probably sue if there was bad faith on the student's part, but do these agreements address this scenario? Do they focus on screening students to…

My understanding is that Lambda school is very focused on teaching you what you need to get a job, so if you were just "interested in tech" you would probably be better served by Udacity, other free or nearly-free online courses, or just reading books.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#37

Post by caust1c »

Having friends in the program, I can tell you it's run like a circus.

Expecting 10 people who don't have any experience programming to cooperate on a project without any support or oversight is just asking for student failures.

Of course they'll say that the students have supports through their PMs, EMs or TLs (depending on the mood, they change the role title), but they're never available and miss meetings constantly. Also, they've reogranized the curriculum multiple times during the tenure of my friends, and don't wait till the next batch like a sane school would.

I feel really bad for the excellent teachers they brought on board. They ended up with a lot more than they bargained for.

Half or more of the program is composed of the crappy group projects.

The people who succeed after lambda school is in spite of the program, not because of it.

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#39

Post by songzme »

cheshireoctopus wrote: post #34
songzme wrote: post #17

I'm not a fan of bootcamps because I think a lot of them are more focused on making money than actually helping people who need help. Last year I decided to take action and started a free coding group at our local library: https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3 I show up before work every day (M-F at 8am) to help students who are learning how to code. So far no students have gotten a job yet, but our group consistently…

This is really inspiring. Thank you for sharing. Few questions if you do not mind: 1. How did you broadcast your Meetup to your students? 2. It looks like you have students pull lessons from a repo. Do you find it challenging to manage a handful of students who are all at different places in your lessons? 3. How do you avoid burnout? 4. Do you plan on open sourcing your lessons?

Thanks for asking!

1. I simply created the meetup group. Showed up, people came. It was empty the first week couple of days, I just made it a point to show up. When there were no people, I simply just read hn or did some work. When the first student came, I made sure to be nice so he feels inspired to come back. The library took note, wanted to make it official with their library program and give us a dedicated room / parking even though we only have 4 consistent students. (Libraries love it when tech community volunteers to help teach).

2. I was honest with students that I can't help everyone and my time is limited (though I try). If they helped each other it would make my life easier. They have been good at helping each other.

3. I don't understand burnout, I'm guessing it's a symptom of ambition and expectations (I'm really not sure because I've never understood it. If I experienced it previously I never noticed). I just make sure to have no expectations. All I hold myself accountable for is to show up. If I did something wrong I apologize and move on, there's no point beating myself up over anything. I don't have big ambitions to make millions and millions, I just want physically show up for people who need help.

4. Yes. I want to open source it completely, such that if people wanted to repackage it into their own bootcamp they have the freedom to do so (not sure what license that would be, but I'm not at that point yet). Right now I just document everything in notion: https://www.notion.so/garagescript/Table-of-Contents-a83980f...

Re: Lambda School’s Misleading Promises

#40

Post by pembrook »

While I find Lambda’s incessant twitter evangelizing as annoying as the next guy, I’m not sure any article I’ve seen is painting a realistic picture about Lambda.

Media outlets have incentives to either paint you as the second coming of Christ or as Satan. It appears Lambda, for a while, actually succeeded at convincing journalists they were the former.

After a while, people get bored with that though. The incentives that drive clicks flip. Suddenly Lambda is now Satan. Burn it down! Downvote all sympathizers!

Here’s the reality: all models for education can work for certain people in certain instances. Lambda is definitely the best choice for some people. But no single company is going to solve something like “education” or “healthcare” because they are political institutions tied to the power dynamics that determine how society is arranged. You cannot brute force this without gaining influence over government itself.

This is not as simple as disrupting where people buy their shampoo or where they see ads.

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